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Avera to build $16.5M medical office building in Mitchell

Jon Walker
10:59 p.m. CDT June 20, 2014

MITCHELL Avera Queen of Peace Hospital officials announced an $18.1 million plan Friday to build a physician office building on the south side of Mitchell as the first step in turning the site into a full-service medical campus.

The building will go up on what now is a grassy 30-acre field along the south side of Interstate 90 and west of the Cabela's retail store. The hospital will break ground Aug. 5 for a three-story building to open in early 2016. Construction will run $16.5 million, with the $1.6 million the price Avera Queen of Peace paid the Mitchell Area Development Corporation for the land.

Long-range plans include a new hospital on the site, but there is no timeline for that move.

"That will be the future home, the long-term home for Avera Queen of Peace," said Tom Clark, the hospital's regional president and CEO. "It could be 20 years. It could be 30 years. We just don't know."

The immediate concern is more office and clinic space, improvements that will help in physician recruiting and keep step with the health industry's shift away from inpatient care toward outpatient services. Other buildings will follow.

The announcement establishes another in a recent series of major building projects for the east-central South Dakota city historically known for its Corn Palace. Most of Mitchell is north of I-90. The opening of Cabela's in 2000 on the south side began what now is a two-mile industrial, retail and motel district along the highway. Other sections of town include several expanding businesses that helped sustain the city during the recent recent recession, said Bryan Hisel, executive director of the development corporation.

CHR Solutions, Innovative Systems and Vantage Point Solutions are a trio of companies that give Mitchell about 500 consulting, engineering and software jobs on the north side of the community. Dakota Wesleyan University dedicated its new $11.5 million Glenda K. Corrigan Health Sciences Center last fall and announced this spring construction plans for a new health and wellness center. Mitchell Technical Institute is building a new 80-acre campus. The city has a new $2 million soccer complex, with other improvements to come for City Hall and the Corn Palace.

"We're having steady, modest growth," Hisel said. "We're not booming. But we are steadily moving the needle in the right direction in office jobs, in manufacturing jobs. It is so below the radar screen. It's just quietly happening."

Mitchell has 15,500 people, up about 6 percent since 2000.

The new medical building will have 70,000 square feet, Clark said. Offices and clinical services will use the first two floors at the start, with the third floor left open for growth. A priority is to create space to hire more doctors.

"Currently, we have no place to put them," Clark said.

Dr. Pat Malters, a physician specializing in internal medicine, said the new building's design will emphasize privacy and fast service.

"We want them to experience short wait times, so we placed a priority on the efficiency of the building. When you look at the layout of the clinic, you will not see a large waiting room," she said. "Certainly we'll have comfortable places for people to wait, but our design is planned around efficient processes with a goal of getting patients in to see their provider as quickly as possible."

The plans imply continued, long-term use of the current Queen of Peace hospital at Fifth and Foster in a northeast residential neighborhood. The hospital, which traces its start to 1906, now has 99 beds in two buildings that date to 1974 and 1994. Some construction on the campus goes back to 1921. St. Joseph and Methodist hospitals merged to create Queen of Peace in 1991, which took on the Avera name in 1998.